Beloved Ex-PlayStation Boss Believes $70, $80 Games Are a Steal

If the game is released and is nearly perfect maybe. Sucks spending 70$ and the game being broken in areas and waiting on future patch promises

Garbage a steal at all if its the complete edition with dlc ye then it' not when games are released a mess nowadays and then dlc is released on top too gain more money pure greed

I just don't see me ever being happy with the idea of spending upwards of £60 on a game, no matter how good it supposedly is. I understand increasing costs, etc. but that's a price point that's just too hard to justify for me (as I'm sure for many others, also). The effect of this is that game's sales tank and more people buy 2nd hand, or long after release for a deep cut sale. Case in point, I only just picked up rebirth, because it was £35 brand new. Some stores are still selling it 2nd hand for about £45...

Says the wealthy video game producer 🙄

I think for me it depends on the game.... if it's a game I'll play over and over again Mario Kart being a good example then I don't mind paying the higher price for it.

If it's a one and done game then I find it a little harder to justify spending so much

It is, but that’s on the very rare case that a game comes out being absolutely perfect without any issues, bugs, predatory monetisation, and is the best possible thing you can play.

AAA games very rarely are that these days, so till then, £70/80 is not good value outside of the outliers.

Game publishers have the right to price their games at what they see fit, but I also have the right to not buy it till it falls to the value I deem worthy.

For me it depends on the finished quality and game length, no way I'm paying £80 for a game that can be completed in less than 10 hours. Games like Ghost of Yotei, God of War, Persona, Final Fantasy and Horizon are games id gladly pay £80 for as they are usually polished and offer 20+ hours of gameplay.

A very rare Shuhei Yoshida L 😔 no sir, $80 games aren't a steal when we take into account season passes, expansions and everything that falls under DLC and live service. Plus most of these games aren't releasing in a complete state.

Is not the 90s and early 20s anymore when you bought a game and it had all its of its content included and was patched to almost perfection. Now we buy the game and have to wait days or weeks for the developer to finish patching it.

They could be a £100 for all I care.

I wait for sales discounts I rarely buy a game until its been out for 2 years or more patched up and most importantly tested by the ones willing to pay full price.

The unfortunate thing is this is the way of the world. Everything is going up in price! I remember the jump from $39.99 to $49.99. Then from $49.99 to 59.99. Now we’re going up even more. It sucks! But it’s our hobby and we love it so we’ll pay. Either that or games as a service. Because we all know how much gamers love that idea…

Considering how much it costs to develop a game (programmers, graphic artists, 3D designers, actors, support tech, etc.), and the fact that many studios don’t see any profit for years, this kind of pricing is understandable.
The issue isn’t with the price, but with the quality. I’m happy to pay €80 for a game, but then I expect at least 20–25 hours of well-written, exciting story, with good and varied gameplay.
It should also be well-optimized - 4K 60FPS minimum - and both the main character and side characters should be memorable and likable.
As for the graphics, I don’t care if it’s near-photorealistic or something more pastel-styled like Life is Strange, as long as it looks beautiful.
This is my hobby so I have no problem paying €80 for a well-crafted game, but yes, then it should meet the expectations I just described.

Any discussion of inflation and so forth doesn’t take into account wage stagnation and literally every bill being far more expensive. The hobby is starting to price people out and when it becomes the plaything of the upper classes then the artform suffers.

@Member_the_game
Nearly Switch 2 time.

Paying it for say a game like BOTW or TOTK or AC shadows then yes it’s worth the money if you really enjoy those games.

But say a 12 hour game that once done is done the price does seem steep.

Key word is “really great” games. A lot of games are not really great, they’re just ok. You also have to factor in time. Dark Ages provides 20 hours on the higher end for a 90 dollar price tag. Clair obscur provides at least 30 for 60 dollars, and that’s assuming you beeline the story and some side quests. Obviously this will change depending on the player, so some will get hundreds of hours out of Doom. I don’t mind higher price tags but I do mind when games are deemed a failure or just not successful by the publisher when they asked too much for too little.

@matekomlosi very well said. I personally prefer a creative art direction over photorealistic graphics, though sometimes they do go hand in hand. But if it runs at 18 fps unless I turn it to blurry town, even that isn’t enough to bring in my investment.

@nessisonett agreed. I think pricing people out is the big issue. I’ve had to go from buying each new game that I enjoy to limiting myself to one every other month or so. It was a hard adjustment but worthwhile. I’m 34, I’m not going to skip bills and cat food, quality of life things etc just for a game that will keep me entertained for a few hours.

This also effects those that wait for sales, for example 30% off a game that costs £75 is still going to cost you more than before when you was waiting for 30% off games that were £60. So either way everyone is going to end up paying more than before.

No it's not.shuhei stop it.word up son

@nessisonett If anyone is priced out, it will only be temporary for a given title provided that distribution remains varied. Prices of games drop based both on competitive pressure between retailers and with newer releases. It's damn difficult to be priced out of the hobby with an enormous number of titles available for peanuts on places like GOG that will run well on PCs that are cheaper than last gen's consoles.

Still, I don't believe wage stagnation is a good argument against the rise on prices. I'm going to us US numbers because that's where I am. Check out numbers for wherever you are. I'm using average over median because that data is more readily available.

2000:
Average Hourly Wage: $16.97 (census.gov)
Price of New Release: $49.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 2.9

2010:
Average Hourly Wage: $19.21
Price of New Release: $59.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 3.12

2020:
Average Hourly Wage: $33.36
Price of New Release: $59.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 1.8

2025:
Average Hourly Wage: $30.19
Price of New Release: $79.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 2.65

Wages have indeed stagnated and even fallen, but I would argue that game prices stagnated for even longer and what we're seeing is a market correction.

@IntrepidWombat apologies for jumping in to your debate, but I believe you missed out the cost of living from your numbers though. You can't only provide half the data.

If a larger percentage of your income is already spent on rent/bills, food, you know, the essentials to live, then what good are these other numbers?

I'm not saying your first numbers are wrong, but you do have to go deeper to provide your argument with more weight.

I'm never spending $80 for any game no matter what. I'm at the point i wait 6 months for a full patched game around $40. Once things go all digital and games clued to full price i will switch to PC or get a cheap xbox an go gamepass.

I'm sure I'm in the minority but I always felt lucky how cheap games still are for how expensive they are to make and how much I get out of them....also how flexible the pricing actually is with the constant sales. When we get to $150 for normal version releases THEN I'll start getting worried

And he's absolutely right, but internet people assume that's not the case because other internet people are equally unreasonable.

I believe the point he’s trying to make is you spend $70-$80 for 80-100+ hours of entertainment versus say buying movie tickets (plus if you buy popcorn and a drink) is pricey to spend 2-3 hours watching something and that be it.

@Juanalf all those are extras that you can completely ignore and greatly enjoy the base game. Like we used to do before all these additions (DLC, expansions, etc) became the norm.

I believe the main issue here is that a lot of games launches in a terrible state and needs some patches to solve these issues. If games launch in a nearly perfect state then I guess people will be happy to support these studios and buy the games full price.

@MojoMonkey why he has a right to opinion just like u do lmao

Everyone went nuts when Nintendo announced it’s new Switch 2 game prices, yet Mario Kart World, a game at it’s maximum new price, is still £67 on digital in the UK, and just how may £70 games are there again in Sony’s PSN store…………… Yeah seems Sony and Microsoft have got a strange idea of value IMO.

@DonkeyFantasy but you can sell it immediately and make a significant amount back, if it's physical or a game on steam.

Good luck convincing the general public. Studios closing left and right. These morons are tone deaf.

He’s not wrong. Go to the movies with my wife cuz it’s one of the few we need to see in theater? $30. For 2 hours.

If you’re mad that something that eats up 15-20 hours (which is on the short side) is too much at $70 then you’re an entitled whiner. Learn to budget.

Enough with the sensible comments, @UltimateOtaku91. You know how I love to disagree with you... 😂

@Ravix I could, but then we'd be me missing other context - cost of living in different regions, racial disparities, gender disparities, education, etc, etc. I understand what you're saying in that we would also need to check what percentage of income is considered disposable, but I'm trying to keep things surface level since this is a video game forum and it's not really that important.

I play video games since before the 8bit days, last game I payed "full price" for was either Elden Ring or Death Stranding, whichever came later, astrobot I got on release for 44€. I have so many games in my library that I am not in need to play the "new and shiny" thing right away. if a game is digital only, there is no way I pay full price, the one exception would be a SOCOM 2 Remake (which, thanks to Sony, will probably never happen).
They can charge whatever they seem fit, I will always wait for a sale or buy it second hand. I know I might be in a small minority.

I am also very curious what the new Mario Kart will entail, that it justifys the 80€ price tag. 40 more reused tracks? Nothing against it, however for me that would be another slap in the face from Nintendo, they are good at doing exactly that and get away with it free almost all of the time.

Dedicated gamers spend maybe 2 hours per day for playing, 60 hours per month, 2-3 big games per month, 240 $ per month. For a hoppy of that intensity, that’s not too much in industrial countries.

If you are a junkie though, spending 4 hours per day, then play Fortnite or other F2P stuff.

Try living in a country where video games permanently go up in price two times a year, and then tell me about steal.

I will never commit to paying 80 euro a game besides like 1 or 2 exceptions. I can wait, there are so so many games in my backlog. I still haven't bought ratchet and clank and demons souls because i haven't seen them drop below 39.99 this generation. But they will eventually.

The problem is there are more and more people like me who either don't mind waiting or can't afford the price increases which is leading to less and less purchases on launch. It's a vicious cycle really and I can only see one outcome where a crash happens and a lot of big studios/publishers will go under

@IntrepidWombat it is important when you're talking about whether people can afford the games or not 😅

Nah. I’ll wait for a sale. Thanks though.

I think yes and no. Good games give me a lot of value. Even buying them at launch this gen - Horizon Forbidden West = 200+ hours, Street Fighter 6 = 600+ hours, Returnal = 150+ hours.

But at the same time, I've paperback books bought for €15 that have given me tens of hours, and CD albums for €15 as well that I've got thousands of hours out of (and more again if I decide to learn how to play some of the songs).

@S1ayeR74 Mario Kart World is £75 physically and in general for most of the world physical is more expensive than digital with Switch 2 (US is an exception but in the bad sense of $80 being both). PS5 has the better deal as most 3rd party games have the full game on the disc and physical is usually cheaper than digital.

Wow didn't expect him of all people to be such a massive sellout

I would have no problem paying up to 100€ if it ment the games were complete on release without microtransactions and battlepasses.

I mean i paid 100 for forza horizon5 and i still dont have all the frickin car packs.

Yeah I agree it’s daylight robbery

@nessisonett Even then it’s still 0% inflation in roughly 30 years. That’s quite insane actually.

Guy is just out of touch. Games were a steal a decade+ ago when they were actually good now you're just throwing money away especially with releases like star wars outlaws which was utter Gar-Barge or avowed one of the most boring and lazy RPGs i have ever had the displeasure of playing and I enjoy the poe universe but when they force you to play as a godlike human , make the orlans too big and create a world that's like a green screen studio with mannequins stuck in place nah man ain't even worth it if it was gave away for free.

Assuming the game is extremely fun, good length and fun for that length maybe. But a lot of games wear out their welcome or just aren't good. £65 is a lot of money to spend on something that doesn't meet your expectations.

Or you can buy a game like stardew valley or monster hunter and get hundreds of hours without having to pay the "premium entertainment" tax that's suddenly started popping up. I'd say vote with your wallets but people have absolutely zero self control nowadays. Immediate gratification is one hell of a drug.

@John_Deacon why would you add DLC and season passes? And why would you buy it at launch, when you can't afford it? With movie tickets, you can't wait to watch it at the cinemas at a lower price (the experience at home isn't the same). And if you want the extras (e.g. deleted scenes, extended version), you have to buy the DVD/bluray etc.

Even people at the top can compare apples to apples and realize that especially certain video games offer tremendous value for money compared to other forms of entertainment.

it's not like he's saying that 1,000 USD tickets to Taylor Swift aren't expensive.

@ATaco well said.

@jgrangervikings1 no matter how much you're making, you can tell if something is a steal or not. Especially if you weren't always well off. Sure, some people forget and other pretend to forget how they used to live, but it's the exception that people are completely detached from reality.

Bottom line: compared to other forms of entertainment, (going out with friends for drinks, going to, to concerts, to the cinema, to the opera, etc), it's a steal, though not as much as Netflix and other streaming platforms.

You can easily spend that on a night out and not remember any of it.

@Grumblevolcano That maybe but that was not my point, Sony charges £70 for its AAA first party games as does Microsoft in digital download format, Nintendo does not.
And it is only retailers like Amazon who reduce game prices, there is just a such chance of Nintendo’s games being discounted.

Aye maybe a steal for him, old bugger probly got a hefty payout 👍

At this point I would probably prefer to pay the extra £10, if it meant that games dont release broken or in bad technical state (60fps minimum).
He is right - top game prices have not risen in line with wages / inflation since the start of this generation, and depending on game CAN be good value for money, but devs/publishers will have to ensure their game warrants the price increase or they face much lower sales numbers in the backlash.

I'm not of the hour count ratio but quality. Does it work, does it offer mechanics/level design, progression that isn't repetitive, lacking & has 2 modes (racing more so, but party/others would count here too), moveset and more worth my time.

Film, music, books sure, but games are bad design for their prices, besides MTX/DLC. Production costs (and if they mess around with decisions from themselves, execs, pubs, etc. week to month to year) but what they do with it I don't respect.

Shuhei I disagree 2nd time, most times I'd agree.

B grades of 5/6th gen are my favourite games. Mechanics/tone/art are memorable. Nowadays forgettable, generic, repetitive all Indies to AAA design mentality.

If it doesn't it isn't worth a purchase at all (aka why I refuse to buy any PS5/Xbox Series games/consoles none have been worth it, graphics/empty game design, no purchase) repetitive waste of time products by people following trends badly to compete/not doing something interesting with them.

Or comfort, audiences/uncreative people involved/no good ideas, samey & not enough of a brain to spin it off/make interesting off trends/systems, etc. story, graphics/themes/repetition of settings/gameplay garbage.

Waste of time Indies underskilled or not they barely put the effort in to work on gameplay or work around their limited skills. AA are wannabe AAA besides their team size/ambition nowadays they suck more then the past & their mentality/marketing shows. Even AAA vets are just as pathetic/conditioned & haven't changed of budget/wasting time of design.

Gameplay matters, how you navigate, platforming, adventure so puzzles, how you communicate is it typical. All the little details not forcing story, setting/themes as that's not enough. You need more then that to make a game worth while. As well as button inputs.

So price means nothing to me if it is fitting enough aspects for it's production.

Splatoon 2 had a grapple hook I went oh great but how they used it was good for platforming.

My favourite open worlds are not nowadays but Sunset Overdrive/Gravity Rush/Infamous Second Son because of their gameplay for tower defence, a mix of typical & moveset side missions.

Most these days I can't stand their blandness & boring ideas in production quality. Burnout Paradise was fair for a racing one but I hate how it scales some things/it's map navigation.

Most platformers, racing, action adventure games by Indies/AAA suck, they are sandbox/2 event or classes/weak progression, boring movements/RPG systems slop. Why would I support that.

Making empty/dumbed down games or too wish fulfillment or samey characters or elves and dwarf and no original fantasy characters, just recycling, can you see why I get bored is because of safe corners they cut or repurposing.

They are a waste of effort, time/lack of creativity so I am way harsher on all Indies, A, AA, AAA because I hate modern game design priorities. They all do it. Weak ideas. Safe ideas. Nostalgia or other things to convey the same ways over and over.

So no production quality in visuals/world design/voice acting, but if gameplay is pathetic no sale.

I respect production quality yes/think that justifies a price no doubt not hour count to filler.

It's obvious to focus on how much goes into games art/music/programming/animation the latter two are a joke/repetitive design so why would I respect them at all even if most important as art to hold it all together.

But when you also make games that are off putting to players, less likely they are buy it and forget about it. Seems to be Sony’s future 1st party games

There are certain games that I would have paid €150 on. Some games that I already have spent that amount on (limited editions). So if the game is quality I will be your customer.
I'm just more careful with the games I pick.

@John_Deacon I don’t see why that price is “outrageous”. It’s bad that they release games that aren’t totally finished, I agree. But that’s another discussion and has nothing to do with the price. If it costed 10 bucks it would still be annoying and bad.

Rather... robbery! Game price is robbery. If you get average game lenght 70-80 hours and average movie lenght of 2 hours. Movie ticket costs about £7, game about £90 (including dlcs)

And now imagine movie as game. You don't have to buy whole theatre to watch movie. Your movie is ready on release. Your movie doesn't contain "to see this scene, buy additional ticket" and "scene is missing or broken, come back next week or month". Movies are not overwhelmed by same scenes again and again until it continues.

If you count all these cons, you would happily pay max £4 for this type of movie (missing scenes included) so games should cost around 2/3 of actual price so around £55 for whole game (dlcs included).

Easy for him to say. $80 isn't about 5% of his monthly income.

I say charge more. Might force people into buying games they actually want to play, and spending more time enjoying them, rather than throwing them on the pile because they're more addicted to buying the ****ing things than actually playing them.

I got expedition 33 for £24. It was on sale during preorder. The price of games won't bother me, I just won't buy a game if it's more than what I would pay. And I have friends who don't buy new games. They all usually wait for a sale.

@John_Deacon You say when the price goes up, but it doesn’t. It’s the same price as 25-30 years ago. And that’s without calculating in inflation.

For the rest, I agree that games should be finished on release, as I said. That’s the main reason why I don’t buy games on release; later on I’ll have a better version. The price has nothing to do with that though.

People will be stealing them alright.

So, he's not wrong.

In theory he is right and $80 isn't much for a great game that offers 20-40 hours of entertainment.
But in reality the game market is so oversaturated that we can get similar experiences for $10 or even lower. Especially those who are willing to wait.

Idk if he is beloved but i only found out about him from the myriad of articles in here about every little thing he says in his interviews. Personally i am more interested in games than corporate.

@SausageWearer My problem since the end of PS4/start of PS5 era is that I'm buying them and not enjoying them and giving up halfway through most of the time because either the writing is terrible or it has been filled with so much bloat it just isn't worth my time.

The big studios can charge what they want, but I've been avoiding them over the last couple of years because I'm just tired of lacklustre, soulless experiences. Horizon 2, GOW Ragnarok and Spiderman 2 were the final nails in the coffin for me.

@SausageWearer Can't say I disagree. I'm at a stage in my life where I have more money to buy games than I do time to play them. As a result, I have more games now than I can hope to play.

Free to play isn't really free to play though is it? We all have kids screaming out for V bucks, Robux etc etc

I do think the hoopla over $80 genes is excessive. It's just, the solution is so simple: if you think $80 is too much for a game, don't buy it. Wait for a sale, buy indie, buy older games that have significantly devalued. It's incredibly easy to game without having to buy $80, $70, or even $60 games. So just do that.

You don't need to try starting an online revolution that neither publishers nor general audiences give a s*** about. Gaming isn't, nor has it ever been, about accessibility. It's always been a luxury, and no one's entitled to it. Publishers aren't greedy for reconsidering MSRP, and consumers aren't stupid for enabling them. If you personally don't like the $80 price, don't buy at that price. If you personally don't like microtransactions, don't pay for them.

I will concede there's a point where it gets predatory — mostly with faux-gambling and FOMO MTX. And it's sensible to condemn any instances where a publisher isn't being upfront about pricing or is taking advantage of addictive personalities. But $80 is absolutely not that. It's an upfront exchange that either you're okay with or you're not. And if you're not, then just move along.

I paid 94.99 at Babbages for a cart of Chrono Trigger in the mid 90s. I paid 84.99 for Killer Instinct Gold on N64 and about the same DK64. And DK required the expansion RAM pack. Those games would be the equivalent of $150+ accounting for inflation today. If you cant except it don't play. Or play the F2P potential money pits and stop complaining. I don't like it either considering the overall increased cost of living across the board but to call it excessively expensive is a massive reach. Especially considering one failed game and it's over for most. Just my opinion of course but I find the logic in NOT accepting these prices flawed.

I have yet to pay for a $70 game. No game is worth that, much less more. They all get price reductions and sales. There are so many game out there, no one needs to pay full price to get good games

Wanna know the irony?
He spoke at Gamescom LATAM, an event held in south america where if you have a daily wage of $80 you are already in the top 1% on most countries there.

$80 might be a "steal" for NA, but for other countries it just damn expensive no matter what you offer. Localized prices would help people to see value and help with sales.

The comparison to other entertainment isn't really a fair one. yes the cost per minute ratio is often heavily in its favour but that's not everything.

Gaming is seen as a daily thing, something done at home, it's not the same as going to the cinema or a gig or a sports event where its very much about the experience.

those are varying ranges of uncommon occurrences, if you're going to compare it to different entertainment then Netflix or other streaming services is probably the best comparison and suddenly that cost per minute ratio isn't looking so favourable.

@Juanalf you’re right - it isn’t the 90s and 2000s anymore, and with inflation it’s technically a bargain spending even $80 if you consider the cost of games increasing as well as inflation, while most games still go for $60 or less. You might not like that reality but nearly every single area of product or service has gone up in cost to match inflation.

Let me ask, would it be reasonable to pay $60, 20 years from now? 40 years? 50?

I think it is silly to compare prices of the past, there are so many variables. Especially considering RRP prices are being compared. There really weren't that many people paying 59.99 for games back in the 80s/90s. As a kid back then, I used to make do with 1.99 spectrum games.
The value is decided by here and now. Id guess at a very basic level, cost to make it divided by the size of the audience who wants to buy it. That's why going mainstream, growth, has kept the price pretty stagnant the last few years, despite inflating costs to produce. Id guess to push to make them more expensive is because the audience is not growing any more.

@IntrepidWombat Make the comparison with budget to make a games. And in the end the gamers jump on COD every time and keep spending on that DLC.

Also the free to play games run on addiction from the small amount of people.

Don't know what he's talking about, games in my country are already 80€ (or $90), and they can get stuffed with those prices anyway.

@jgrangervikings1 indeed. It greatly depends on the game, but yeah, come to think of it, I’ve never had a serious issue with a Sony first party game

Finally, the statistically necessary bad take from him. Seldom enough.

@AhmadSumadi this definetly isn't the "way of the world", but the way a capitalist economy functions. Mainly inflation, which exists despite consumption being a main column of an economic model based on profit & gains and infinite growth with finite resources.

@Zazu (#24) we should "steal" games, I think!

Not agree with Shu for this one, especially when there's good games under $70-80. But i get it why he thinks (good) games deserves that price compare to other form of entertainment like movies.

The good old days of walking into my local newsagents and buying a £1.99 cassette game for my Acorn Electron are long over.

Oh, it's a steal Yoshida I agree, a steal from my wallet and bank account. No game is worth more than $50€ and I'm being generous.

Game prices are still the cheapest they have ever been when you factor in inflation. If you bought an SNES game in 1992 it would cost 60 dollars. Sound good right? Wrong, it would have cost 137 dollars in todays money. Bought a PS1 game in 1996, 50 dollars or 102 dollars in todays money. Bought a PS3 game in 2007, 60 dollars of 92 dollars in todays money. 60 dollar games were the norm for over 2 decades and that's while game development costs were skyrocketing. I'm surprised they didn't raise the price at least a decade ago. Also SNES and PS1 games were significantly shorter and lighter on content in general outside of RPG's. Pick any game on the PS1 that wasn't an RPG, look up playthroughs of it on YouTube and I guarantee you that playthrough is 8 hours or less (vast majority don't even exceed 6). Meanwhile todays games regardless of genre almost always last into at least the double digit hours. You all really do not understand how good you have it now.

@J2theEzzo I agree the new prices sucks. Almost everything about gaming lately kinda sucks. Lack of games, price of games, politics in games, and Sony taking the first few years of this generation off.

However, these devs need to make more games and take more risk as gamers we should support them so devs can be inspired to make games like Clair Obscur and offer it at a modest price.

I hate the fact the PS4 Pro was $700 but I bought it anyway because, I support mid console refreshes and I want them to continue. Plus the Pro is a beast and we will see how much when the PS6 comes out.

I don't know if I like the premise of this entire argument. I mean, we now exist in the era of really variable pricing from game to game. Some games cost $10, some $50, some $80. This harkens back to the 80s and 90s, when cartridge games could get up to $100 (over $200 today).

Each game must be valued independently. If you think the bang is worth the buck, then it's appropriately priced.

Free to Play games should not be factored into this argument. F2P games make all their money on MTXs. They're not "free." Their marketing just makes you think they are. Before you know it, you've spent $100 on a F2P game...

@Vyse_the_Legend You can very comfortably buy all your games for less than $50. Just don't buy them when they first come out. The same way you don't need to spent $20 to see a movie. Just wait until you can rent it for $4.

Gonna have to hard disagree on this, when most games are releasing at that price are launched in a broken state, takes months of patching, then we have MXs and DLCs on top of all it.

Ive spent countless hours and had more fun in games like Balatro, Vampire Survivors, Stardew, No Mans Sky than any big AAA game this gen

I agree with what is said. Look at a movie ticket, paying for a standard viewing at a basic cinema can be £10. That is a 2 hour movie. Extrapolate that to a 20 hour experience, you are paying £100. Extrapolate that to a 40 hour RPG experience and you are paying £200. So I see where he is coming from. But, no one is happy to pay over £60 on games. £50 was a sweet spot. If it gets too expensive, you will limit it to enthusiasts.

Last game I bought for full price on release day was probably Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on the PS2 for £40!
Otherwise, I'm fine waiting a for a month or two and buy a disc from an online retailer for tens of pounds less than the joke store price.

I'd buy Broforce 2 for full price, if they ever get round to making one, but that also won't be £80. These days, high price does not equate with high quality gameplay.

@Gedrick yes

Sure, with his paycheck i am sure it's nothing.

Turns out, we are not all millionaires. 🤷‍♂️

@sanderson72 Oh, Dark Alliance 2... 🥲 When will they ever make a (good) new one? After the last GoW imitation of theirs failed and flopped...

And Broforce 2?! Now we're really dreaming! (Sigh)

Not so beloved now is he ?? LOL

tell that to the people who have 200 euro/month salary.

When you think a cinema ticket can be £20+ for a 90min movie and considering you generally get way more than 8 hours of use from an £80 game, it's a good deal. Obviously it all depends on how much you get out of the game. Unsurprisingly though, game prices have gone up because wages and other costs have gone up, but people complain if a game is too short, don't want to pay more (if anything at all), whilst at the same time being outraged when studios are shut down. The money for game development has to come from somewhere.

@Wizardweb maybe it should come from people like beloved Yoshida’s fat, fat paychecks.

Borderlands 4 and Metal Gear Delta? Is probably my limit this year at £70+ man.

Or rich person says poorer people should be happy with paying more.

People agreeing are delusional. I can get great games on steam for $10 and less

Agree, it's steal... when I bought it discounted at 50% or more later lol. I don't need to play games day one, $70 games teach me to be patient.

@nessisonett No one is entitled to any hobby or vanity if its not attainable for their financial situation.

The prices are justified. Games have more polygons, better voice acting, better animations, more pixels, more in game systems etc.. I could go on. Like every other product in the consumer economy, the price has gone up. If the prices stay low then more professionals will lose their jobs. As people in the gaming industry don't work for free. They want good compensation for their technical skill sets and benefits. Both of which the companies have to pay for. The increase in prices for games is in line with everything else in the vanity consumer goods industry.

People need to be more concerned about the costs increases for basic human needs things. Like food to eat and a roof over our heads. Outside of that everything else is just vanity and one isn't entitled to vanity goods if they don't have a surplus of funds to have fun in the west.

Lastly this is why people should have supported physical media as it gives people a chance to get used copies.

@Juanalf That is if all those bugs ever gets patched. Nothing more annoying than coming back to a game to find out the bug isn't fixed and never will be.

As someone who has been gaming since the Megadrive days I am suprised that the price of videogames didn't go up years ago considering they were around £40 back then. People complain but say Rockstar prices GTA6 at £80 how many millions of people will buy it on
release day. For me it depends on the game GTA6 , Witcher 4 are potentially 2 games I'd have no problem paying extra for.

Only the uneducated would say he’s wrong in principle.

Same people that complain about PSPlus every month.

@Jacko11 What a patronising and judgemental comment.

@SMJ …yet factual.

@wildcat_kickz That's exactly what I do, I simply don't agree with Yoshida that $70 or $80 for a game is a steal.

This guy has been nothing but their lapdog since he retired